


The mouse Reepicheep

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Series: Narnia Musings [50]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, in which reepicheep is born to this narnia blind and unknowing, in which there are dryads and language and a mouse first sets eyes on narnia and all her beauty, the Gaining of Speech through a Good Deed, the way a human is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:20:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23925265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: When Reepicheep was just a pup, he didn’t yet know Narnia. When Reepicheep was just a pup, he didn’t yet know of Telmar, cast in salt and iron and wails. When Reepicheep was just a pup, his eyes firmly shut, his mother’s burrow stretched underneath a rose bush that had grown from something that died on a battlefield over a thousand years ago. “Roses grow where blood has been spilled, my darling”, his mother would say, a soft whistle in her throat. “It makes them thrive, you see. The violence of it.”
Relationships: Reepicheep & Dryads (Narnia)
Series: Narnia Musings [50]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1714795
Comments: 14
Kudos: 31





	The mouse Reepicheep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aryelee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aryelee/gifts).



> _“We begin in the dark and birth is the death of us.” - **Antigonick (Sophokles), trans. Anne Carson**_

Here is the thing about stone tables. They are crafted and soaked in blood for a thousand years, etched in misery and wails and Silence. The witch was here when it was made, and on it, every traitor belongs to her. (Every child who steals an apple, every Beast who bares their neck, every mouse who cannot Speak, every creature who doubts.)

They are built from the earth, petrified, Language woven all about them, iron-coated, terrible things. And the witch collects betrayal atop them, gathers it all in her blade. The mice watch, their noses twitching, their throats not shaped around a Language. They gnaw through the bindings, when there is no one to bear witness, no one to keep them. It’s a quiet, hurried, Speechless thing, and neither witch nor lion notice.

She kills the lion with it, too, has forgotten about the Deep Magic and its consequences. And yet, she sneers and snaps at him, the gathering around her a circle of cackles.

They leave at dawn.

In the end, it’s a quiet, hurried, Speechless thing. In the end, two girls are curled up atop a broken stone table, etched in iron and tears. Their cheeks are red and wet, their voices coarse, and they drape the table and all that lies on it in flowers. In the end, the mice gnaw through the bindings, as they always do, beneath English wails and English school girls.

In the end, gaining Speech looks much like choking on rope and slipping on broken stone as the sun rises, heavy and thick.

In the end, gaining Speech is luck.

When Reepicheep was just a pup (the smallest of them all, with his paws and his tail all curled, his eyes closed long after his siblings had first seen the world, bursting with light), he didn’t yet know how to Speak. His mother was a shuffle of fur and soft hums all about him, the burrow dark and cool, coiled with all that this world had lived through.

When Reepicheep was just a pup, he didn’t yet know Narnia. When Reepicheep was just a pup, he didn’t yet know of Telmar, cast in salt and iron and wails.

Reepicheep’s siblings grew with the earth around them, the world stretching above them, they opened their eyes, and one by one, mother took them to the surface. They came back restless, with stories of light and colours and the way the air tastes like salt and iron, up there. They came back and curled around Reepicheep with his closed eyes, his folded ears, his tail – not yet unfurled.

They came back, and they Spoke.

It didn’t sound right, at first, the way nothing quite did to Reepicheep, with his ears folded and his nose twitching. It sounded dull and sharp edged beneath their teeth and under his trembling fur. He squeaked at them, just as he always did, a high pitched, soft thing from somewhere deep in his lungs.

When Reepicheep was just a pup, his eyes firmly shut, his mother’s burrow stretched underneath a rose bush that had grown from something that died on a battlefield over a thousand years ago. “Roses grow where blood has been spilled, my darling”, his mother would say, a soft whistle in her throat. “It makes them thrive, you see. The violence of it.”

And then she took all of his siblings by the hand and left him alone, nestled in the burrow, under something that couldn’t still be dying, under a rose bush’s roots, creaking and groaning and curling about him. Reepicheep’s nose twitched with each new sound, each new movement in the earth, the distant sound of his siblings’ laughter.

And then, something picked him up.

Carefully and slowly, a hand bigger than anything he’d ever known curled about his body, and lifted him from the earth. There was the sound of something – someone – breathing, louder and deeper than he could have ever imagined, and then –

A giggle.

“Hello, little mouse”, someone said, with a voice like shards of glass clinking against one another, a tilt to their words that Reepicheep could not comprehend. “Don’t you move or I’ll prick you.”

Reepicheep squeaked as loudly as he could, pressed at his eyes, at his paws, his tail, the weakness of it, the darkness of it surrounding him. _Mother!_

The hand holding him did not move. There was a small tut, and then a sweet smell, stronger than even the iron in the soil. “Be not afraid”, said the voice, still soft, still careful, still bursting with laughter. “I don’t want to harm you, little mouse. And I won’t, if you don’t move.”

Reepicheep squeaked louder. His darkness was tinted red, somehow, and his tail uncurled.

“I’m full of thorns, little one.” The smell lessened, and the red turned brighter, urgent. “I can hold you without harming you, if you’ll let me.” The world around Reepicheep creaked and groaned and moved about, and he could not yet Speak. The voice hummed and he was lifted higher, still. “Tell me, why should I kill what my roots are protecting?”

There was a rose bush nestled around his mother’s burrow, and it had grown from something that died an age ago. There was a rose bush nestled around Reepicheep, and its dryad was a giggling burst of laughter – alive.

Something soft pressed against his fur, and the smell was stronger now than it had ever been, sweet and heavy on Reepicheep’s tongue, viscous in his throat. “Come on, little mouse”, said the rose, “open your eyes. What else did I bring you up here for?”

Reepicheep opened his eyes to the world drowning in a sunset, the sky stretching purple and pink and red and orange and yellow all across Narnia, its horizon a straight line. The trees were still and unmoving until one of them was felled by a Telmarine’s axe, and Reepicheep sat in a dryad’s palm, in between thorns and giggles.

The dryad lifted him back into the burrow, and curled around the shards of glass buried deep within the soil until all Reepicheep could see was her mouth – full of teeth, and her eyes like polished glass.

When his mother came back that day, his siblings in tow, Reepicheep knew how to Speak.

He didn’t tell his mother about the dryad hidden in the soil, curling around something rotten that is still, after all this time, suffocating. His ears unfolded and his Voice settled in his throat, and his siblings took him with them when they went to the surface, looking for food or entertainment on the forest floor.

Reepicheep could barely see the sun through the trees.

During the day, when his siblings were curled around him, the dryad settled into the burrow with her smile sharp enough to slice through the world, her eyes pupilless, and she tilted her head and sang to him. And even though her Speech was different from his and her hands were still blood stained from where she’d last touched a Telmarine soldier, Reepicheep nestled himself into her palms, and stared up at her, his eyes big and hungry for words.

She tells him of Narnia, stretched between the cardinal points. Of the edge of the world, of the magic breathing in its core, of witches and wardrobes and woods and four strangers, stumbling into Narnia’s snow one day. She tells him of spells, too, and of the groaning ache that is a curse lifted, melted and undone.

And then, when he’s almost not a pup anymore, she shows him what she’s grown from.

It is a mess of glass splintered bones, the soil still soaked red with a witch’s blood – a child’s blood, a brother’s desperation, a sister’s tears. The bones are scattered, bound tightly in her roots, the remnants of something once magic still clinging to it all.

The dryad tilts her head. “I am a rose”, she says softly. “We grow from battle, and where blood was spilled. The usurpator’s castle has roses ranking all about it, feeding on all that they’ve done. I feed on what she has done.”

“Who is she?”

“She brought the Hundred Year Winter”, says the rose. “She soaked the soil first red, then brown, and she froze all of us in it.”

“Oh”, says Reepicheep.

The dryad smiles. “They will be back, little mouse. She can feel it. I can feel it, and so can this earth. Can’t you?”

( _It’s odd_ , Reepicheep thinks, years later, as he stares at the Kings and Queens of Old, at the heavens settled on the Magnificent’s shoulders, at the blood dripping from the Valiant’s fingertips, _how one cannot tell they are frozen or encrusted in salt, suffocating, until spring draws near._ )


End file.
